Today’s decisions should be based on all the information we can get, not on
hiding the decline.

This archive contains some 5.000 emails picked from keyword searches. A few
remarks and redactions are marked with triple brackets.

The rest, some 220.000, are encrypted for various reasons. We are not planning
to publicly release the passphrase.

We could not read every one, but tried to cover the most relevant topics such
as…

/// The IPCC Process ///

<1939> Thorne/MetO:

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary […]
<3066> Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.
<1611> Carter:

It seems that a few people have a very strong say, and no matter how much
talking goes on beforehand, the big decisions are made at the eleventh hour by
a select core group.
<2884> Wigley:

Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive […] there have been a number of
dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC […]
<4755> Overpeck:

The trick may be to decide on the main message and use that to guid[e] what’s
included and what is left out.
<3456> Overpeck:

I agree w/ Susan [Solomon] that we should try to put more in the bullet about
“Subsequent evidence” […] Need to convince readers that there really has been
an increase in knowledge – more evidence. What is it?
<1104> Wanner/NCCR:

In my [IPCC-TAR] review […] I crit[i]cized […] the Mann hockey[s]tick […]
My review was classified “unsignificant” even I inquired several times. Now the
internationally well known newspaper SPIEGEL got the information about these
early statements because I expressed my opinion in several talks, mainly in
Germany, in 2002 and 2003. I just refused to give an exclusive interview to
SPIEGEL because I will not cause damage for climate science.
<0414> Coe:

Hence the AR4 Section 2.7.1.1.2 dismissal of the ACRIM composite to be
instrumental rather than solar in origin is a bit controversial. Similarly IPCC
in their discussion on solar RF since the Maunder Minimum are very dependent on
the paper by Wang et al (which I have been unable to access) in the decision to
reduce the solar RF significantly despite the many papers to the contrary in
the ISSI workshop. All this leaves the IPCC almost entirely dependent on CO2
for the explanation of current global temperatures as in Fig 2.23. since
methane CFCs and aerosols are not increasing.

<2009> Briffa:

I find myself in the strange position of being very skeptical of the quality of
all present reconstructions, yet sounding like a pro greenhouse zealot here!
<2775> Jones:

I too don’t see why the schemes should be symmetrical. The temperature ones
certainly will not as we’re choosing the periods to show warming.
<1219> Trenberth:

[…] opposing some things said by people like Chris Landsea who has said all the
stuff going on is natural variability. In addition to the 4 hurricanes hitting
Florida, there has been a record number hit Japan 10?? and I saw a report
saying Japanese scientists had linked this to global warming. […] I am leaning
toward the idea of getting a box on changes in hurricanes, perhaps written by a
Japanese.
<0890> Jones:

We can put a note in that something will be there in the next draft, or Kevin
or I will write something – it depends on whether and what we get from Japan.
<0170> Jones:

Kevin, Seems that this potential Nature paper may be worth citing, if it does
say that GW is having an effect on TC activity.
<0714> Jones:

Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about
the tornadoes group.
<3205> Jones:

Useful ones [for IPCC] might be Baldwin, Benestad (written on the solar/cloud
issue – on the right side, i.e anti-Svensmark), Bohm, Brown, Christy (will be
have to involve him ?)
<4923> Stott/MetO:

My most immediate concern is to whether to leave this statement [“probably the
warmest of the last millennium”] in or whether I should remove it in the
anticipation that by the time of the 4th Assessment Report we’ll have withdrawn
this statement – Chris Folland at least seems to think this is possible.

/// Communicating Climate Change ///

<2495> Humphrey/DEFRA:

I can’t overstate the HUGE amount of political interest in the project as a
message that the Government can give on climate change to help them tell their
story. They want the story to be a very strong one and don’t want to be made
to look foolish.
<0813> Fox/Environment Agency:

if we loose the chance to make climate change a reality to people in the
regions we will have missed a major trick in REGIS.
<4716> Adams:

Somehow we have to leave the[m] thinking OK, climate change is extremely
complicated, BUT I accept the dominant view that people are affecting it, and
that impacts produces risk that needs careful and urgent attention.
<1790> Lorenzoni:

I agree with the importance of extreme events as foci for public and
governmental opinion […] ‘climate change’ needs to be present in people’s
daily lives. They should be reminded that it is a continuously occurring and
evolving phenomenon
<3062> Jones:

We don’t really want the bullshit and optimistic stuff that Michael has written
[…] We’ll have to cut out some of his stuff.
<1485> Mann:

the important thing is to make sure they’re loosing the PR battle. That’s what
the site [Real Climate] is about.
<2428> Ashton/co2.org:

Having established scale and urgency, the political challenge is then to turn
this from an argument about the cost of cutting emissions – bad politics – to
one about the value of a stable climate – much better politics. […] the most
valuable thing to do is to tell the story about abrupt change as vividly as
possible
<3332> Kelly:

the current commitments, even with some strengthening, are little different
from what would have happened without a climate treaty.
[…] the way to pitch the analysis is to argue that precautionary action must be
taken now to protect reserves etc against the inevitable
<3655> Singer/WWF:

we as an NGO working on climate policy need such a document pretty soon for the
public and for informed decision makers in order to get a) a debate started and
b) in order to get into the media the context between climate
extremes/desasters/costs and finally the link between weather extremes and
energy
<0445> Torok/CSIRO:

[…] idea of looking at the implications of climate change for what he termed
“global icons” […] One of these suggested icons was the Great Barrier Reef […]
It also became apparent that there was always a local “reason” for the
destruction – cyclones, starfish, fertilizers […] A perception of an
“unchanging” environment leads people to generate local explanations for coral
loss based on transient phenomena, while not acknowledging the possibility of
systematic damage from long-term climatic/environmental change […] Such a
project could do a lot to raise awareness of threats to the reef from climate
change
<4141> Minns/Tyndall Centre:

In my experience, global warming freezing is already a bit of a public
relations problem with the media

Kjellen:

I agree with Nick that climate change might be a better labelling than global
warming

Pierrehumbert:

What kind of circulation change could lock Europe into deadly summer heat waves
like that of last summer? That’s the sort of thing we need to think about.

/// The Medieval Warm Period ///

<5111> Pollack:

But it will be very difficult to make the MWP go away in Greenland.
<5039> Rahmstorf:

You chose to depict the one based on C14 solar data, which kind of stands out
in Medieval times. It would be much nicer to show the version driven by Be10
solar forcing
<5096> Cook:

A growing body of evidence clearly shows [2008] that hydroclimatic variability
during the putative MWP (more appropriately and inclusively called the
“Medieval Climate Anomaly” or MCA period) was more regionally extreme (mainly
in terms of the frequency and duration of megadroughts) than anything we have
seen in the 20th century, except perhaps for the Sahel. So in certain ways the
MCA period may have been more climatically extreme than in modern times.

/// The Settled Science ///

<0310> Warren:

The results for 400 ppm stabilization look odd in many cases […] As it stands
we’ll have to delete the results from the paper if it is to be published.
<1682> Wils:

[2007] What if climate change appears to be just mainly a multidecadal natural
fluctuation? They’ll kill us probably […]
<2267> Wilson:

Although I agree that GHGs are important in the 19th/20th century (especially
since the 1970s), if the weighting of solar forcing was stronger in the models,
surely this would diminish the significance of GHGs.
[…] it seems to me that by weighting the solar irradiance more strongly in the
models, then much of the 19th to mid 20th century warming can be explained from
the sun alone.
<5289> Hoskins:

If the tropical near surface specific humidity over tropical land has not gone
up (Fig 5) presumably that could explain why the expected amplification of the
warming in the tropics with height has not really been detected.
<5315> Jenkins/MetO:

would you agree that there is no convincing evidence for kilimanjaro glacier
melt being due to recent warming (let alone man-made warming)?
<2292> Jones:

[tropical glaciers] There is a small problem though with their retreat. They
have retreated a lot in the last 20 years yet the MSU2LT data would suggest
that temperatures haven’t increased at these levels.
<1788> Jones:

There shouldn’t be someone else at UEA with different views [from “recent
extreme weather is due to global warming”] – at least not a climatologist.
<4693> Crowley:

I am not convinced that the “truth” is always worth reaching if it is at the
cost of damaged personal relationships
<2967> Briffa:

Also there is much published evidence for Europe (and France in particular) of
increasing net primary productivity in natural and managed woodlands that may
be associated either with nitrogen or increasing CO2 or both. Contrast this
with the still controversial question of large-scale acid-rain-related forest
decline? To what extent is this issue now generally considered urgent, or even
real?
<2733> Crowley:

Phil, thanks for your thoughts – guarantee there will be no dirty laundry in
the open.
<2095> Steig:

He’s skeptical that the warming is as great as we show in East Antarctica — he
thinks the “right” answer is more like our detrended results in the
supplementary text. I cannot argue he is wrong.
<0953> Jones:

This will reduce the 1940-1970 cooling in NH temps. Explaining the cooling with
sulphates won’t be quite as necessary.
<4944> Haimberger:

It is interesting to see the lower tropospheric warming minimum in the tropics
in all three plots, which I cannot explain. I believe it is spurious but it is
remarkably robust against my adjustment efforts.
<4262> Klein/LLNL:

Does anybody have an explanation why there is a relative minimum (and some
negative trends) between 500 and 700 hPa? No models with significant surface
warming do this
<2461> Osborn:

This is an excellent idea, Mike, IN PRINCIPLE at least. In practise, however,
it raises some interesting results […] the analysis will not likely lie near to
the middle of the cloud of published series and explaining the reasons behind
this etc. will obscure the message of a short EOS piece.
<4470> Norwegian Meteorological Institute:

In Norway and Spitsbergen, it is possible to explain most of the warming after
the 1960s by changes in the atmospheric circulation. The warming prior to 1940
cannot be explained in this way.

/// The Urban Heat Effect ///

<4938> Jenkins/MetO:

By coincidence I also got recently a paper from Rob which says “London’s UHI
has indeed become more intense since the 1960s esp during spring and summer”.
<0896> Jones:

I think the urban-related warming should be smaller than this, but I can’t
think of a good way to argue this. I am hopeful of finding something in the
data that makes by their Figure 3.
<0044> Rean:

[…] we found the [urban warming] effect is pretty big in the areas we analyzed.
This is a little different from the result you obtained in 1990.
[…] We have published a few of papers on this topic in Chinese. Unfortunately,
when we sent our comments to the IPCC AR4, they were mostly rejected.
<4789> Wigley:

there are some nitpicky jerks who have criticized the Jones et al. data sets —
we don’t want one of those [EPRI/California Energy Commission meeting].

Jones:

The jerk you mention was called Good(e)rich who found urban warming at
all Californian sites.
<1601> Jones:

I think China is one of the few places that are affected [urban heat]. The
paper shows that London and Vienna (and also New York) are not affected in the
20th century.
<2939> Jones:

[…] every effort has been made to use data that are either rural and/or where
the urbanization effect has been removed as well as possible by statistical
means. There are 3 groups that have done this independently (CRU, NOAA and
GISS), and they end up with essentially the same results.
[…] Furthermore, the oceans have warmed at a rate consistent with the land.
There is no urban effect there.

/// Temperature Reconstructions ///

<1583> Wilson:

any method that incorporates all forms of uncertainty and error will
undoubtedly result in reconstructions with wider error bars than we currently
have. These many be more honest, but may not be too helpful for model
comparison attribution studies. We need to be careful with the wording I think.
<4165> Jones:

what he [Zwiers] has done comes to a different conclusion than Caspar and Gene!
I reckon this can be saved by careful wording.
<3994> Mitchell/MetO

Is the PCA approach robust? Are the results statistically significant? It seems
to me that in the case of MBH the answer in each is no
<4241> Wilson:

I thought I’d play around with some randomly generated time-series and see if I
could ‘reconstruct’ northern hemisphere temperatures.
[…] The reconstructions clearly show a ‘hockey-stick’ trend. I guess this is
precisely the phenomenon that Macintyre has been going on about.
<3373> Bradley:

I’m sure you agree–the Mann/Jones GRL paper was truly pathetic and should
never have been published. I don’t want to be associated with that 2000 year
“reconstruction”.
<4758> Osborn:

Because how can we be critical of Crowley for throwing out 40-years in the
middle of his calibration, when we’re throwing out all post-1960 data ‘cos the
MXD has a non-temperature signal in it, and also all pre-1881 or pre-1871 data
‘cos the temperature data may have a non-temperature signal in it!
<0886> Esper:

Now, you Keith complain about the way we introduced our result, while saying it
is an important one. […] the IPCC curve needs to be improved according to
missing long-term declining trends/signals, which were removed (by
dendrochronologists!) before Mann merged the local records together. So, why
don’t you want to let the result into science?
<4369> Cook:

I am afraid that Mike is defending something that increasingly can not be
defended. He is investing too much personal stuff in this and not letting the
science move ahead.
<5055> Cook:

One problem is that he [Mann] will be using the RegEM method, which provides no
better diagnostics (e.g. betas) than his original method. So we will still not
know where his estimates are coming from.

/// Science and Religion ///

<2132> Wigley:

I heard that Zichichi has links with the Vatican. A number of other greenhouse
skeptics have extreme religious views.
<4394> Houghton [MetO, IPCC co-chair]

[…] we dont take seriously enough our God-given responsibility to care for the
Earth […] 500 million people are expected to watch The Day After Tomorrow. We
must pray that they pick up that message.
<0999> Hulme:

My work is as Director of the national centre for climate change research, a
job which requires me to translate my Christian belief about stewardship of
God’s planet into research and action.
<3653> Hulme:

He [another Met scientist] is a Christian and would talk authoritatively about
the state of climate science from the sort of standpoint you are wanting.

/// Climate Models ///

<3111> Watson/UEA:

I’d agree probably 10 years away to go from weather forecasting to ~ annual
scale. But the “big climate picture” includes ocean feedbacks on all time
scales, carbon and other elemental cycles, etc. and it has to be several
decades before that is sorted out I would think. So I would guess that it will
not be models or theory, but observation that will provide the answer to the
question of how the climate will change in many decades time.
<5131> Shukla/IGES:

[“Future of the IPCC”, 2008] It is inconceivable that policymakers will be
willing to make billion-and trillion-dollar decisions for adaptation to the
projected regional climate change based on models that do not even describe and
simulate the processes that are the building blocks of climate variability.
<2423> Lanzante/NOAA:

While perhaps one could designate some subset of models as being poorer in a
lot of areas, there probably never will be a single universally superior model
or set of models. We should keep in mind that the climate system is complex, so
that it is difficult, if not impossible to define a metric that captures the
breath of physical processes relevant to even a narrow area of focus.
<1982> Santer:

there is no individual model that does well in all of the SST and water vapor
tests we’ve applied.
<0850> Barnett:

[IPCC AR5 models] clearly, some tuning or very good luck involved. I doubt the
modeling world will be able to get away with this much longer
<5066> Hegerl:

[IPCC AR5 models]
So using the 20th c for tuning is just doing what some people have long
suspected us of doing […] and what the nonpublished diagram from NCAR showing
correlation between aerosol forcing and sensitivity also suggested.
<4443> Jones:

Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low
level clouds.
<4085> Jones:

GKSS is just one model and it is a model, so there is no need for it to be
correct.

/// The Cause ///

<3115> Mann:

By the way, when is Tom C going to formally publish his roughly 1500 year
reconstruction??? It would help the cause to be able to refer to that
reconstruction as confirming Mann and Jones, etc.
<3940> Mann:

They will (see below) allow us to provide some discussion of the synthetic
example, referring to the J. Cimate paper (which should be finally accepted
upon submission of the revised final draft), so that should help the cause a
bit.
<0810> Mann:

I gave up on Judith Curry a while ago. I don’t know what she think’s she’s
doing, but its not helping the cause
<3594> Berger:

Phil,
Many thanks for your paper and congratulations for reviving the global warming.
<0121> Jones:

[on temperature data adjustments] Upshot is that their trend will increase
<4184> Jones:

[to Hansen] Keep up the good work! […] Even though it’s been a mild winter in
the UK, much of the rest of the world seems coolish – expected though given the
La Nina. Roll on the next El Nino!
<5294> Schneider:

Even though I am virtually certain we shall lose on McCain-Lieberman, they are
forcing Senators to go on record for for against sensible climate policy

/// Freedom of Information ///

<2440> Jones:

I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself
and all those working in AR5 would be to delete all emails at the end of the
process
<2094> Briffa:

UEA does not hold the very vast majority of mine [potentially FOIable emails]
anyway which I copied onto private storage after the completion of the IPCC
task.
<2459> Osborn:

Keith and I have just searched through our emails for anything containing
“David Holland”. Everything we found was cc’d to you and/or Dave Palmer, which
you’ll already have.
<1473> McGarvie/UEA Director of Faculty Administration:

As we are testing EIR with the other climate audit org request relating to
communications with other academic colleagues, I think that we would weaken
that case if we supplied the information in this case. So I would suggest that
we decline this one (at the very end of the time period)
<1577> Jones:

[FOI, temperature data]
Any work we have done in the past is done on the back of the research grants we
get – and has to be well hidden. I’ve discussed this with the main funder (US
Dept of Energy) in the past and they are happy about not releasing the original
station data.

I’m really not seeing any great conspiracy in these. Most are pretty standard stuff. Some could sound bad given a particular interpretation but anything sounds bad if you want it to, this is called quote mining.

Openness in the IPCC is a good thing but things like this can be really damaging. Take emails written by people who thought they wern’t being listened to from any organisation and you’ll find some dirt.

A lot of people are just going start thinking ‘climate change is a lie’ without actually reading any of the emails, others will continue to expound their view that everything anybody agrees on is a conspiracy and galactic, and the less honorable (or just plain idiotic) sceptics will be using this as ammunition for years.

I don’t think these scientists are saints but presenting climate change as a (dishonest) lie is just idiotic. No doubt, a lot of the science will be wrong but seriously, what’s the motive?

” Take emails written by people who thought they wern’t being listened to from any organisation and you’ll find some dirt”

Sure. We’re interested in the difference between private opinion and public pronouncement. This isn’t just any organisation. It’s an organisation which has spent 130bn dollars of public money. Our resources. We have a right to know what the £$%$ has been going on.

“A lot of people are just going start thinking ‘climate change is a lie’ without actually reading any of the emails”

Is this any worse than a lot of people blindly accepting the co2 scenario without reading any of the emails?

I don’t think these scientists are saints but presenting climate change as a (dishonest) lie is just idiotic. No doubt, a lot of the science will be wrong but seriously, what’s the motive?

It isn’t climate change which is a lie. It’s the touted certainty that human emitted co2 is responsible for it which is a lie.

When this shower start respecting the value of avenues of research other than treemometry and sharing the research resources so we can get a more balanced view of climate in it’s myriad complexity, we’ll give them a break.

I can respect your concerns and I can respect FOI requests but hacking private emails is another thing. When there isn’t enough being done to curb climate change these kind of things can be really damaging. Especially when you’re going against the status quo. Unless of course you really don’t think that climate change is man made. But then leading world scientists say it is and as far as I can see, nobody has been able to disprove them or show malpractice, even after the so called ‘climategate’.

I’m really not seeing any great conspiracy in these. Most are pretty standard stuff. Some could sound bad given a particular interpretation but anything sounds bad if you want it to, this is called quote mining.

You wish, schmucklet. What you’re seeing in these e-mail messages – and what’s choking you with a reality you’re trying desperately to evade – is strong evidence of a deliberate covert coherence of purpose, method, and message with the manifest intent to present deception and to sabotage “contrarian” critique of the preposterous junk science of anthropogenic global warming warming that had become these C.R.U. correspondents’ stock-in-trade.

Trying to pass that off as “pretty standard stuff” is entirely – hell spectacularly like trying to pass off other practices at Penn State University as [snip]

I can respect your concerns and I can respect FOI requests but hacking private emails is another thing.

You drooling idiot, those were business-related e-mail accounts, line expense items funded by government research grants. This was the reason why the exchanges conducted on those accounts were subject to Freedom of Information (FOI) demands, which are purposed to “unlock” government records.

Were those e-mail accounts genuinely “private” (as in the case of the telephone messages of private persons accessed by Newscorp officers seeking fodder for their scandal sheets), it would have been necessary either to seek specific criminal warrants or go through the civil process of discovery.

The C.R.U. correspondents’ business account e-mails conferred upon these charlatans no genuine expectation of privacy whatsoever. That’s what comes with seeking and battening upon taxpayer funding.

These climate fraudsters became in a very real and binding legal sense government agents, and were subject not only to FOIA requests (which they criminally evaded) but also to that operational transparency to which the private citizenry hold all such “Malevolent Jobholder” types.

You friggin’ idiot, your Cargo Cult Science clowns were not only criminal in their intentions and their practices but so goddam cement-headed that they thought their e-mail conspiracies were “protected” against exposure to their victims.

Just what the hell part of Forrest Gump’s “Stupid is as stupid does” slid past your teensy little diseased excuse for a brain, anyway, carnon

Phil Jones wrote:
>
> Dear All,
> There are several issues you should be aware of:
>
> 1. UEA has denied access to the data to McIntyre (and at least two
> others in the past) – in 2007. One of the three appealed and that
> appeal was rejected.
> We would look stupid if you released the data now.

“You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is
above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5
would be to delete all emails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody
will remember to do it.”

Hi carnun (ref. 25th Nov. at 11:50 pm.) it is very hard to see the full picture when wearing blinkers. What “cause” do you thik that Dr. Mann was talking about repeatedly? Pettersson sums it up nicely (25th Nov. at 3:03 pm.) “ .. Mann, .. Jones, .. Santer, .. Wigley, .. Trenberth, .. Briffa, .. again, they are caught in the act, when they deliberately exaggerate the extent and significance of human impact on climate, while at the same time in private correspondence permits to each other that the evidence not nearly so convincing that they would like. .. ”. One thing that I disagree with there is that the E-mails were private. As has been said many times before, messages sent in an employers time using employers’ facilities are not private to the writers but belong to the owner unless the owner has agreed to such privacy. In the case of the UEA CRU th eowners are the UK taxpayers.

As for your “ .. presenting climate change as a (dishonest) lie .. ” I don’t know any sceptics who do this. We all seem to accept that the different global climates change over time due to natural causes. What we reject is the notion that our use of fossil fuels (which will continue unabated for many decades yet) is leading to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change. That’s a load of CACC propaganda sponsored by the power-hungry, the politicians, the environmentalists and whoever else for their own particular reasons having nothing to do with taking over Nature’s job of controlling those climates.

As for your “ .. When there isn’t enough being done to curb climate change .. ” (25th Nov. at 1:26 am) how on earth do you propose to interfere with Nature without causing your own catastrophe. The processes and drivers of the different global climates are too poorly understood for us to start messing about in our ignorance. All that we should be doing is what we have always done – adapt. Even arch propagandist Professor Stephen Schneider, who suggested that it was up to each individual scientist to decide whether or not to tell the truth, warned against that.

Hi Tucci, are you able to debate without resorting insulting people. Cowards hide behind false names to hurl insults.

Pete Ridley on November 26, 2011 at 11:01 am writes about how those of us on the skeptical (as opposed to the flagrantly lying) side of the discussion about this preposterous “We’re All Gonna Die!” bogosity reject

…the notion that our use of fossil fuels (which will continue unabated for many decades yet) is leading to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change. That’s a load of CACC propaganda sponsored by the power-hungry, the politicians, the environmentalists and whoever else for their own particular reasons having nothing to do with taking over Nature’s job of controlling those climates.

While “CACC” is certainly an appropriate sound to make when it comes to expressing any decent human being’s “hock a loogie” regard for the foul scum pushing this maliciously criminal scheme of violence against the lives, liberties, and property of innocent people all over the planet, wouldn’t it be just as accurate to characterize it as “Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Alarmism” and therefore be able to use the acronym “CACA“?

Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical
troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a
wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these
further if necessary […]
Thorne:

I also think the science is being manipulated to put a political spin on it
which for all our sakes might not be too clever in the long run.

“It seems that a couple of my mails have been highlighted by people wishing to take them out of context. Both related to a very early draft of the IPCC fourth assessment observations chapter that I was asked to review informally as part of the accepted report preparation pathway. This would have been in 2005 or 2006 not 2011. IPCC has several review cycles and numerous lead authors on each chapter to ensure balance and representivity. However, the very earliest drafts inevitably reflect the individual contributor’s perspectives. The review which I undertook was and still is intended to catch such cases and rectify before the formal reviews. I would note that none of the formal review versions retained the vast majority of the text that was being discussed in this email. In other words the process worked. I would note in passing that my understanding is that US FOIA precludes early drafts of papers and discussions thereof precisely because it is vital to be able to discuss fully and frankly scientific work prior to publication, peer review being a necessary but not adequate condition. It is good that scientists care about issues and imperative that they are allowed to discuss report and paper drafts openly if we want the best reports and papers possible.

As to the tropical hotspot issue I raised it was correct … in 2005/6! Here’s some headline news (if a second email tranche release also constitutes news then the bar is set very very low) … science does not stand still. In the past five years there have been multiple new studies using satellites and weather balloons, including the thermal wind evidence. These studies have highlighted even more than was the case then the substantial uncertainty in tropical tropospheric temperature records. We never made these measurements for climate, they are bedevilled by non-climatic artifacts that are poorly understood. The observational evidence is so uncertain as to include anything from somewhat less warming than at the surface to substantial amplification of surface changes aloft. So, no there is no longer anywhere near as strong evidence for a lack of a tropical hotspot as was the case then. Although of course absence of evidence is not equivalent to evidence of absence for some kind of discrepancy between observations and models. The large observational uncertainty and strong inter-model consistency make the observational uncertainty a far more plausible explanation … which was also the state of the science in 2005/6.

Also, to correct a mis-conception (zombie argument?) that the tropical upper-troposphere hotspot is somehow a unique signature of anthropogenic warming this is frankly baloney. The tropical troposphere is dominated by convective mixing processes. Although its not as simple as just a moist adiabatic lapse rate adjustment the net effect is that the tropical tropospheric column simply amplifies whatever changes occur at the surface. If it warms the troposphere warms with greater warming aloft. If it cools the troposphere cools at an increasing rate aloft. Models and observations concur on monthly to inter-annual timescales. So, a forcings run with a net +ve surface radiative effect will have a tropical hotspot and one with net -ve surface radiative effect will have a tropical coldspot. Single forcing model runs can easily verify this and show that the hotspot is no unique signature of CO2 forcing. It just doesn’t stack up physically. The unique anthropogenic signal is a warming troposphere / cooling stratosphere … something that we see very clearly.

Finally, the caricature that has been painted of numerous of the principle actors but particularly Phil Jones are so divorced of reality and distorted. I do not know of a single person who has done more to try to advance data sharing of meteorological data for the last 15 years than Phil Jones (if you doubt me you could mine something useful instead of personal emails … the GCOS report series to see how hard this really is to get to happen and how involved Phil Jones has been). Much of the improvement in data sharing (and there has been) is down to him and a small handful of others. That he gets painted as a data obstructionist is therefore worse than ironic, its dishonest. Data IPR is complicated, particularly when they have potential commercial or geopolitical value / sensitivity. This just is not understood fully outside a small handful of people. It is not the people, like Phil Jones, working to make the data available that people should be directing their ire at. His hands are tied … he did not take the readings and does not own the data. As noted when the data were released there may be real repercussions in terms of data sharing so release may prove a hollow victory for the requestors if it leads to less data sharing which then has a negative impact on our ability to issue accurate weather forecasts or understand future changes.

Well, the UK Met Office is owned by the Ministry of Defence, and annual profits put Apache helicopters worth of funding back into the MoD’s coffers through dividends. UKMO even has a combat unit. Better knowledge of, and forecasting of, the weather gives a tactical and strategic edge; think of D-Day and Arnhem.

“The unique anthropogenic signal is a warming troposphere / cooling stratosphere … something that we see very clearly.”

I’m calling BS on that statement. It’s equally a signal seen when the number of sunshine hours at the surface increases. Less cloud – more insolation at the surface – more evaporation – more heat retention in the troposphere – cooler stratosphere.

” I do not know of a single person who has done more to try to advance data sharing of meteorological data for the last 15 years than Phil Jones”

Phil Jones the great data sharer? Don’t make me laugh. He may be happy to share it with people who go along with his climate myth, but not people he fears “will try to find something wrong with it”.

Yes. ISCCP data shows a marked decrease in low cloud in the tropics 1980-1998 when the warming took place. Also, Willie Soon’s graphs of sunshine hours over Japan vs Chinese temps in the C20th demonstrate the relationship between temperature and insolation.

This is a much more convincing correlation than that obtained by plotting co2 vs C20th temperature, even when coopered up aerosols data are fudge-factored in.

“I do not know of a single person who has done more to try to advance data sharing of meteorological data for the last 15 years than Phil Jones “..

the more times you read this phrase the more opaque and ambiguous it becomes and in context it just becomes hilarious – sharing is good when Jones gets data from 3rd parties but it is not meant to be shared with anyone else. Thanks for the laughs, Norman.

TB — “ISCCP data shows a marked decrease in low cloud in the tropics 1980-1998 when the warming took place.”

Does it? It doesn’t seem to from a quick eyeballing. But the data goes from 1983, anyway.

1983-1987 shows a rise, then a dip to 1991, and a rise to 1994. There’s then a shallow dip to 1998. But for the 1983-1998 period, cloud cover was above the 21 year mean.

ISCCP data plots are available at their CLOUD ANALYSIS – PART 7 page. Look at the Low-Level Cloud Amount (%): 21-Year Deviations and Anomalies of Region Monthly Mean From Total Period Mean Over Tropical (LAT: +-15).

“Low, dense sheets of stratocumulus clouds hanging just above the ocean cool more than they heat. They make efficient shields against incoming sunlight, and because they are low – and therefore warm – they radiate upward almost as much thermal radiation as the surface does. In contrast, the thin, wispy cirrus clouds, which soar at 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) and higher, reflect little sunlight, but they are so cold that they absorb most of the thermal radiation that comes their way. Hence they warm more than they cool. The net cooling effect of clouds is the sum of a large number of such specific effects, many of which cancel one another
[…]
In the midlatitudes, winter brings a substantial decline in solar heating, yet the corresponding drop in air temperature near the surface is between 70 and 80 percent less than what the decline in solar heating would seem to imply. More abundant and thicker winter clouds, with slightly higher tops, trap heat better.”

“sharing is good when Jones gets data from 3rd parties but it is not meant to be shared with anyone else”

It was in the agreements contained in the 2009 Sloppyfirstsgate FOIA.zip that data could only be distributed for “bona fide” academic research and publication in the peer reviewed literature, IIRC highlighted in bold. Is it a coincidence that Climate Audit emphasised including “for academic purposes” during their organised FOIA spamming session?

Hi J(onathan?) Bowers (ref. 26th Nov. at 2:25 pm and 14:03), yes, I’m the same Pete Ridley. To set the record straight, Stormboy/Phil and I sorted out our differences and I apologised for involving his wife (but not for finding out who was cowering behind the false name Stormboy). More on that can be found on Phil’s blog (at http://bloodwoodtree.org/2009/12/16/not-so-wonderful-copenhagen/) as well as in the E-mail that I sent to Jo Abbess marked “Private & Confidential” which she put straight into the public domain. I have always considered one-to-one exchanges to be P&C unless agreed otherwise by the parties and certainly would not deliberately disclose what someone clearly tells me privately and in confidence. Obviously Jo Abbess thinks differently and I leave others to draw their own conclusions about that.

I don’t take kindly to cowards who hurl insults from behind false names and in my opinion Phil was doing that. BTW, Phil confirmed that he was not the coward using the false name “Stormboy” on Jo Abbess’s blog. That coward turned out to be John Byatt from Cooloola Cove, Queensland, but that’s another interesting story (e.g. see my comment at http://www.desmogblog.com/coming-classroom-climate-conflict#comment-714783 on 27th Feb. at 18:08).

Now J(onathan?) Bowers, would you like to disclose a little more about yourself, such as who is pulling your strings on the CACC issue?

Roger (ref. 26th Nov. at 6:56 pm.) it should be obvious why J(onathan?) Bowers considers that heretics like Steve McIntyre and Ross McKittrick weren’t involved in QUOTE: .. “bona fide” academic research and publication in the peer reviewed literature .. UNQUOTE. IN his religion they were intending to use those data to do the devil’s work and try to disprove the truths of a Hockey Team” scientist. To J Bowers that’s not science, simply underhanded tactics promoted by the wicked fossil fuel industry to destroy the credibility of thousands of honest scientists.

TallBloke–You have a fine body of work over here and there is no need to have a giant Nipple in the middle of it!!! Erase Bower. He’s neither intelligent, interesting or insightful. Just get rid of him permanently. We’re all for dissent but ‘….I know you are but what am i…’ pap doesn’t wash. Cheers!!!

Johnnythelowery (27th Nov. at 2:48 am ) the worst thing that we sceptics can encourage is the gagging of the CACC disciples. Open-minded readers are put off blogs that do that. Leave it to the likes of RealClimate.

[…] of a new emails only days before an annual United Nations meridian summit set to start Nov. 28. The files are swelling fast online, including an concomitant content file, that pulls out quotes allegedly […]

[…] After reviewing several of the Climategate II emails, I have come to the conclusion that they speak for themselves. Many of the researchers involved do little or any hiding of their agenda. Most of the emails are readily intelligible for the average educated reader, and so the best advice one can give is to read some of them yourself. […]

[…] The unidentified person who left the link to the zip file at McIntyre’s blog also left it at Jeff’s Id’s blog – and at Tallbloke’s. Since the latter resides in a timezone five hours ahead of McIntyre, Tallbloke received the link shortly past 9 am and appears to have been the first person to blog about it. […]